Overcoming Cooking Oil Problems, Ombudsman Suggests Government To Return Prices To Market Mechanism

Photo: Doc. Between

JAKARTA - The problem of cooking oil has not been resolved. In fact, the government itself has issued a number of policies to stabilize prices and ensure stock availability.

However, the policy did not change anything.

Responding to this issue, Member of the Indonesian Ombudsman Yeka Hendra Fatika suggested that the price of cooking oil return to the market mechanism.

"Eliminate the root of the problem, namely price disparity, leave it to the market mechanism while still imposing a domestic market obligation (DMO) to ensure the availability of cooking oil," he said in a press teleconference quoted on Wednesday, March 16.

According to Yeka, the impact of being released into the market mechanism is the high price of cooking oil. Therefore, the government needs to protect vulnerable groups of people. Such as poor families and SMEs and micro that consume cooking oil in bulk form.

With this option, the government can release all types of cooking oil to the market mechanism and the government will focus on serving the community groups who are vulnerable to expensive costs, namely the poor and micro-enterprises and MSMEs. Yeka said the method was through the direct cash assistance mechanism or BLT.

"In order not to burden the state budget, for BLT purposes, the government can increase the export tax and levy on CPO derivative products such as RBD Palm Olein, RBD Palm Oil, RBD Palm Stearin and PFAD," he explained.

Then, said Yeka, in order to ensure the availability of cooking oil, the government needs to strictly monitor the export of used cooking oil. This needs to be preceded by including this type of export in the restricted export category.

HET only for bulk cooking oil

Yeka explained that another proposal is to set the highest retail price (HET) only for bulk cooking oil, but that DMO and DPO will still apply. Then, simple and premium packaged cooking oil is released from the HET policy.

"Bulk cooking oil continues to use HET with a special distribution network in traditional markets, with a transparent and accountable monitoring mechanism. Strict supervision is carried out in border areas, both sea and land routes," he said.

As is known, at this time the government decided to return it according to the economic price or market price. Meanwhile, bulk cooking oil is subsidized so that the price is set at Rp. 14,000 per liter.

Previously, Coordinating Minister for the Economy Airlangga Hartarto said the price of bulk cooking oil would be subsidized so that the selling price was Rp. 14,000 per liter.

"The government will subsidize the price of bulk palm oil and subsidies will be given based on funds from the Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDPKS)," said Airlangga, after a limited meeting (ratas) with President Joko Widodo in Jakarta, Tuesday, March 15.